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Todd Eberle Photographs the High Line

It was a bold and ambitious idea: to transform the hulking, derelict structure of rusting iron that stretched from Gansevoort Street to 30th Street on Manhattan’s West Side into a park. And it was finally realized yesterday.

The High Line had originally been conceived in 1929 as a way to lift commercial rail traffic above the street and spare pedestrians, whose encounters with the trains were so often fatal that the area had been christened Death Avenue.

The rise of trucking and the descent of the economy, however, eventually did in the High Line. The last train traversed it in 1980. Soon after, local merchants began demanding that the structure be razed.

Click through for a full slide show of photos by Todd Eberle.Instead, a non-profit called Friends of the High Line intervened, arguing successfully that this unique, unseen artifact—long since overgrown with plants, like a postcard from Alan Weisman’sThe World Without Us—could be reborn as a public promenade. The first section, between Gansevoort and 20th St, opened yesterday. The remainder will open next year.

Designed by Diller, Scofidio and Renfro, the architectural firm behind Lincoln Center’s recent overhaul, the brand-new High Line Park is an instant icon. Elevated 30 feet above ground level, it has the feeling of a pedestrian boulevard in the air, and offers a shining glimmer of hope that the city of today is far different from the one that suffered so dismally 80 years ago.